As the Middle East is burning, riven apart by a seemingly irresolvable fight to the death, today's Daily Mail has put its finger on perhaps the most important aspect of the story: Why are the BBC journalists reporting the story not wearing ties?
The fact that reporters such as Huw Edwards, Ben Brown and Jeremy Bowen are open necked as the 100F temperatures rise in their various boltholes in Lebanon, Gaza and so on, while the burning buildings raise the heat a notch or two more, may be a rather petty concern to some minds. But the Mail insists it is "irritating" viewers."
So much so that the paper has recruited onetime BBC reporter Michael Cole (who left the Corporation under something of a cloud, let's not forget, when he revealed details of the Queen's speech in 1987 before she delivered it) to berate his former employees.
"We see a succession of male reporters with studied expressions of concern, their shirts not just open at the neck but artfully showing tufts of hair, their manly chins embellished by stubble," Cole thunders. He adds that there is "no reason or excuse for such appearances" and says that the BBC is "throwing away its credibility" because of it. He even goes so far as to claim that the tielesness is actually disrespecting those who have died in that war.
Cole also criticised the whole nature of the BBC's "grandstanding" coverage which features these tie-less reporters talking to each other instead of discussing issues with locals on the ground.
That's as may be, but haven't we been here before? I seem to remember the Daily Mail was at the forefront of attacking Peter Sissons for not wearing a black tie (I think it was burgundy) when announcing the death of the Queen Mother in 2002. Words which the Mail used to describe Sissons included "disrespectful, creepy, brutish, clumsy, dismayingly tentative, intrusive, shocking, embarrassing and an assault on any sense of decency". He wasn't happy and later accused the paper of having a vendetta against the BBC.
And does it matter what they look like? Isn't it just a question of what they say? Isn't it also a question of practicalities? I don't know about you, but it has always annoyed me that any job I do that insists on wearing ties never imposes the same strictures on female employees. Do you think male clothing etiquette should be relaxed when the reporters are in boiling hot countries and under severe strain? Or do you agree with the bosses at the Evening Standard who slapped a ban on men wearing shorts to work even in the recent heatwave? Or do you simply not care?
